> 2x2 for lowercase. Right. That's 16 possible "characters" Correct.
> with one of those being empty space and 4 of them being single pixels. Wow you figured out not every possible combination is -> useful <- all on your own? Here is your sticker.
> I call BS. 1. "Better to keep your mouth shut and thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." 2. You've designed which fonts again? That's what I thought...
If you have an iPhone 5 you can see the font at a native 1:1 pixel mapping... Uppercase is readable, lowercase is beyond the limitations of the human eye which was one of the goals of the exercise: To see just how small one could go since no one had investigated this.
He will be doing a proper writeup discussing these things in greater detail to educate people like you who know absolutely nothing about fonts. No idea when though.
10-bit, 12-bit, or even 16-bit per channel provides more headroom for finer gradients.
The problem is exemplified when you do multiple blends. Since most display devices are still only 24-bit the maximum error we want with 8-bit-per-channel is 1/255 = 0.00392156862745. Using 16-bit per channel means we can literally add/blend/multiply 256 images before we would start to see quantization artifacts.
Another way to think about this is that for every image you add ("process) you need 1 more bit of precision. i.e. Assuming we are "processing" 8-bit per channels, you need a total of n-bits:
9-bit if you add a total of 2 images, 10-bit if you add a total of 4 images, 11-bit if you add a total of 8 images, 12-bit if you add a total of 16 images, 13-bit if you add a total of 32 images, 14-bit if you add a total of 64 images, 15-bit if you add a total of 128 images, 16-bit if you add a total of 256 images,
Keep in mind that part of the problem is _caused_ by the fact that we are stuck with shitty 100 dpi resolution so 24-bit images are fugly. With 333+ dpi images 24-bit is OK. One of my close photography friend argues that with 1200 dpi you could get away with 6 or 7-bit per channel and I almost inclined to believe him.
With crappy 24-bit one is forced to do Tone Mapping (aka HDR) to get around the limitations of 24-bit to better utilize the color gamut. It is a huge "Hack" / "Kludge" which better approximates what the eye can see but it is still a hack.
Now with all that said and done the BIGGER problem is "True Blacks" - the state of the industry is even more pathetic compared to 10-bit displays.;-(( If you google "Pioneer Kuro Black" you'll see that Kuro set the "gold" standard for blacks back in 2007 and it has largely been ignored.:-( https://www.google.com/search?q=pioneer+black
In the audio word we use 24-bit DACS to provide headroom when we add 16-bit audio signals because if you only used 16-bits for A + B you could potentially get clipping. With 24-bits you have more than enough head room to minimize overflow and underflow.
At 150 dpi I can read both upper and lowercase. At 300 dpi I can "barely" make it out.
I gave the 300 dpi font test to another friend and he could make "barely" make it out -- so I know the font "works."
> but I'm sure there are other issues with the rest of the alphabet (perhaps f).
Your theorycrafting fails. There is more then enough pixels for 3x3 uppercase -- the hard part was the 2x2 lowercase, especially the lowercase 's'.
The font creator did it as a test in abstraction and pattern matching to drive the point home that almost no one really understands how to design ultra tiny fonts well. (The old graphics coders from them 8-bit computers do..)
A friend of mine has designed the world smallest font: 3x3 for upper case which includes 2x2 for lowercase.
On the iPhone 5 with ~326 ppi I can't read it so it looks like 300 dpi is "good enough" for screen. (Between 600 and 1200 dpi for print.)
The problem is the cost of getting a proper 300 dpi monitor that is 24" diagonal = ~19" wide by ~15" tall makes for an effective resolution of 5700 x 4500 well over 4K resolution.
It is going to be quite a while before the economies of scale deliver cheap 300 dpi monitors. There just isn't enough demand.:-(
And don't get me started on that shitty 8-bits-per-channel, aka 24-bit color...
> that Microsoft needs is a marketing department that doesn't just say "its called.net, lets put the word.net on everything, Office.net, Visual Studio.net, SQLServer.net" > Maybe they should stop getting drunk all the time and do some fricking professional marketing-type work.
/sarcasm But people can't Google for ".NET" -- if we changed it to a unique unambiguous search term that means they might actually be able to find answers to why our shit doesn't work ! *ducks*
There are two things Microsoft doesn't have a fucking clue understanding:
* Marketing - as you succinctly point out
* UI -- do you read a book in UPPERCASE? So why are ALL the menu items NOW IN UPPERCASE?!?!
Actually I would say the epitome of Microsoft Marketing was them producing the internal what not to do "Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Package" which satires their packaging to a "T".
As a long time game dev & gamer I think I agree with your conclusion and hope your post gets modded up.
The Wii was literally a 2x GameCube. They "won" that round of consoles focusing on gameplay over "flash". It is sad to see them trying to do the same thing with the Wii U and failing. The marketing dept. alone should be fired for dumb naming.
Your comment about Nintendo focusing on Software like Sega is very interesting! Nintendo has a long history of "gimmick" or "fad" hardware and I think it has finally run it course. I just don't see how there can be another round of consoles after the Xbone and PS4 now that they are using commodity off the shelf hardware. The Kinnect / Move is basically a bust -- what kind of gimmicky hardware is Nintendo going to introduce to entice players? They had their chance with the Wii controller. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
I too don't see how Nintendo can survive. They can only milk the Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, PikMin francise stuff for so long before kids get bored and there isn't enough critical momentum / mass / interest.
Sad to see that my analysis isn't flawed and other people are seeing the same writing on the wall.:-(
Which are supposed to be illegal except when the government does it apparently
I'll probably be down-voted for stating the obvious truth but instead of shooting the messenger people should focus on the message:
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
The problem is two-fold:
1. If people are too stupid to save for themselves then the rest of society should not be (financially) burdened to literally pay for their stupidity.
2. If the taxes are > 10% then guess what: We have a government spending problem. No wonder people can't save when an additional 23% of their money is stolen.
> Well, authors got no such thing until copyright was invented in the wary 18th century
While that is true that is a little misleading as it doesn't list WHY copyright was even invented in the first place:
Publishers invented copyright to stop other publishers from copying and making money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law [wikipedia.org] "The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books."
and
"Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time."
and
"The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King's Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called "monopolies,"...
and
"In England the printers, known as stationers, formed a collective organisation, known as the Stationers' Company. In the 16th century the Stationers' Company was given the power to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. Only members of the Stationers' Company could enter books into the register. This meant that the Stationers' Company achieved a dominant position over publishing in 17th century England"
and Emphasis added about Statute of Anne:
The Statute of Anne (c.19), an act of the Parliament of Great Britain, was the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the government and courts, rather than by private parties.
Prior to the statute's enactment in 1710, copying restrictions were authorized by the Licensing Act of 1662. These restrictions were enforced by the Stationers' Company, a guild of printers given the exclusive power to print -- and the responsibility to censor -- literary works. The censorship administered under the Licensing Act led to public protest; as the act had to be renewed at two-year intervals, authors and others sought to prevent its reauthorisation.
...
Faced with this failure, the Stationers decided to emphasise the benefits of licensing to authors rather than publishers, and the Stationers succeeded in getting Parliament to consider a new bill. This bill, which after substantial amendments was granted Royal Assent on 5 April 1710, became known as the Statute of Anne due to its passage during the reign of Queen Anne. The new law prescribed a copyright term of 14 years, with a provision for renewal for a similar term, during which only the author and the printers they chose to license their works to could publish the author's creations.
This was not "copyright" as is normally understood; although there was a monopoly on the right to copy, this was available to publishers, not authors, and did not exist by default; it only applied to books which had been accepted and published by the Company.
As a mystic I was wondering the exact thing: How does a layman decide between exoteric and esoteric when they have no valid frame of reference to even understand the difference?
>of course you will need a system that can use ZFS
Actually I was suprised how well "ZFS on Linux" works if you don't have a FreeNas/BSD system. * http://zfsonlinux.org/
It is too bad the ZFSonLinux documentation is total garbage but at least it was relatively painless to get it to work on a spare Ubuntu box. IIRC, ZFS on Linux setup was...
> What about all the stuff his foundation does about malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV? > for some his more destructive effects on the computer industry,
Gee you think?!
So this asswipe waits until:
a) his Wife prods him to donate his wealth b) AFTER ripping off and bankrupting several companies.
And you think that is OK??
An true philanthropy would of done it WHILE he was accumulating his wealth not after he is an greedy asshat. Let me know when I can upgrade Windows for $20. Fuck him, Microsoft, and their greed for setting the computer industry back 20 years.
Microsoft is on the long road to being irrelevant. They throw billions of dollars at a problem (Xbox/Xbone, bing, RT, store) trying to get everyone else to drink their "Kool-Aid" (TM). People aren't [that] stupid.
Only other thing to mention is that supercomputing trades latency for bandwidth. i.e. high latency but vastly high bandwidth.
Intel does a great job of masking latency on x86 so we get "relatively" low latency for memory but it's bandwidth is crap compared to a "real" supercomputer or GPGPU.
Riiiight.... says the 7-digit UID to the 5-digit UID person who has been browsing & contributing to/. for 10+ years and programming since the 80's.
Are you even able to stay focused for more then 2 minutes and actively engage that brain of yours or do just like to make yourself look a bigger idiot with the immature ad hominem attack which adds nothing constructive to the discussion at hand?
Slashdot Mirror
> 2x2 for lowercase. Right. That's 16 possible "characters"
Correct.
> with one of those being empty space and 4 of them being single pixels.
Wow you figured out not every possible combination is -> useful <- all on your own? Here is your sticker.
> I call BS. ...
1. "Better to keep your mouth shut and thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
2. You've designed which fonts again? That's what I thought
As you can see the uppercase is perfectly readable ...
* http://peopleofhonoronly.com/michael/dev/fonts/font_uppercase.bmp
The lowercase is "mostly" readable ... it is a great test to see what DPI is good, poor, and fail. (The lower the better for readability, but poorer for sharpness.)
* http://peopleofhonoronly.com/michael/dev/fonts/font_lowercase.bmp
And just to demonstrate one can bold any font ...
* http://peopleofhonoronly.com/michael/dev/fonts/font_uppercase_sources_ken.png
If you have an iPhone 5 you can see the font at a native 1:1 pixel mapping ... Uppercase is readable, lowercase is beyond the limitations of the human eye which was one of the goals of the exercise: To see just how small one could go since no one had investigated this.
* http://peopleofhonoronly.com/michael/dev/fonts/font_uppercase_iphone5.png
* http://peopleofhonoronly.com/michael/dev/fonts/font_lowercase_iphone5.png
He will be doing a proper writeup discussing these things in greater detail to educate people like you who know absolutely nothing about fonts. No idea when though.
> what value is there to > 24-bit color?
TL:DR; The eye can clearly see more then 256 levels of primary colors.
There are 3 big problems with 24-bpp.
1. Mach Banding (or Gradients)
2. Blending
3. Limited Gamut
10-bit, 12-bit, or even 16-bit per channel provides more headroom for finer gradients.
The problem is exemplified when you do multiple blends. Since most display devices are still only 24-bit the maximum error we want with 8-bit-per-channel is 1/255 = 0.00392156862745. Using 16-bit per channel means we can literally add/blend/multiply 256 images before we would start to see quantization artifacts.
Another way to think about this is that for every image you add ("process) you need 1 more bit of precision. i.e. Assuming we are "processing" 8-bit per channels, you need a total of n-bits:
9-bit if you add a total of 2 images,
10-bit if you add a total of 4 images,
11-bit if you add a total of 8 images,
12-bit if you add a total of 16 images,
13-bit if you add a total of 32 images,
14-bit if you add a total of 64 images,
15-bit if you add a total of 128 images,
16-bit if you add a total of 256 images,
Keep in mind that part of the problem is _caused_ by the fact that we are stuck with shitty 100 dpi resolution so 24-bit images are fugly. With 333+ dpi images 24-bit is OK. One of my close photography friend argues that with 1200 dpi you could get away with 6 or 7-bit per channel and I almost inclined to believe him.
With crappy 24-bit one is forced to do Tone Mapping (aka HDR) to get around the limitations of 24-bit to better utilize the color gamut. It is a huge "Hack" / "Kludge" which better approximates what the eye can see but it is still a hack.
There are 10-bit-per-channel monitors but at $1,000 the demand just isn't there. :-( http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/accessories/10bit.shtml
Now with all that said and done the BIGGER problem is "True Blacks" - the state of the industry is even more pathetic compared to 10-bit displays. ;-(( If you google "Pioneer Kuro Black" you'll see that Kuro set the "gold" standard for blacks back in 2007 and it has largely been ignored. :-( https://www.google.com/search?q=pioneer+black
In the audio word we use 24-bit DACS to provide headroom when we add 16-bit audio signals because if you only used 16-bits for A + B you could potentially get clipping. With 24-bits you have more than enough head room to minimize overflow and underflow.
Does this help?
Incorrect.
At 150 dpi I can read both upper and lowercase.
At 300 dpi I can "barely" make it out.
I gave the 300 dpi font test to another friend and he could make "barely" make it out -- so I know the font "works."
> but I'm sure there are other issues with the rest of the alphabet (perhaps f).
Your theorycrafting fails. There is more then enough pixels for 3x3 uppercase -- the hard part was the 2x2 lowercase, especially the lowercase 's'.
The font creator did it as a test in abstraction and pattern matching to drive the point home that almost no one really understands how to design ultra tiny fonts well. (The old graphics coders from them 8-bit computers do..)
I agree 100%
A friend of mine has designed the world smallest font: 3x3 for upper case which includes 2x2 for lowercase.
On the iPhone 5 with ~326 ppi I can't read it so it looks like 300 dpi is "good enough" for screen. (Between 600 and 1200 dpi for print.)
The problem is the cost of getting a proper 300 dpi monitor that is 24" diagonal = ~19" wide by ~15" tall makes for an effective resolution of 5700 x 4500 well over 4K resolution.
It is going to be quite a while before the economies of scale deliver cheap 300 dpi monitors. There just isn't enough demand. :-(
And don't get me started on that shitty 8-bits-per-channel, aka 24-bit color ...
> What I'm really waiting for is 100Hz screens without ghosting,
They exist already.
* Asus VG248QE 144Hz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236313
* Asus VG278HE 144 Hz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236293
The real breakthrough is nVidia's LightBoost mode which forces a black frame after ever rendered frame.
http://www.blurbusters.com/zero-motion-blur/lightboost/
The brightness is decreased by 50% but that's why the 248 and 278 are twice as bright as regular TN LCDs.
The Apple Cinema has slightly better colors (since it is an IPS panel) but I prefer the Asus 248 for 120 Hz gaming.
> that Microsoft needs is a marketing department that doesn't just say "its called .net, lets put the word .net on everything, Office.net, Visual Studio.net, SQLServer.net"
> Maybe they should stop getting drunk all the time and do some fricking professional marketing-type work.
Someone needs to mod this up!
There are two things Microsoft doesn't have a fucking clue understanding:
* Marketing - as you succinctly point out
* UI -- do you read a book in UPPERCASE? So why are ALL the menu items NOW IN UPPERCASE?!?!
Actually I would say the epitome of Microsoft Marketing was them producing the internal what not to do "Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Package" which satires their packaging to a "T".
* Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Package
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k
* Microsoft confirming they orginally made the parody
http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/Microsoft_Confirms_it_Originated_iPod_Box_Parody_Video/
Good catch!
Agreed 100%
As a long time game dev & gamer I think I agree with your conclusion and hope your post gets modded up.
The Wii was literally a 2x GameCube. They "won" that round of consoles focusing on gameplay over "flash". It is sad to see them trying to do the same thing with the Wii U and failing. The marketing dept. alone should be fired for dumb naming.
Your comment about Nintendo focusing on Software like Sega is very interesting! Nintendo has a long history of "gimmick" or "fad" hardware and I think it has finally run it course. I just don't see how there can be another round of consoles after the Xbone and PS4 now that they are using commodity off the shelf hardware. The Kinnect / Move is basically a bust -- what kind of gimmicky hardware is Nintendo going to introduce to entice players? They had their chance with the Wii controller. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
I too don't see how Nintendo can survive. They can only milk the Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, PikMin francise stuff for so long before kids get bored and there isn't enough critical momentum / mass / interest.
Sad to see that my analysis isn't flawed and other people are seeing the same writing on the wall. :-(
RIP Nintendo. You gave us some good games.
Two words:
Ponzi Scheme.
Which are supposed to be illegal except when the government does it apparently
I'll probably be down-voted for stating the obvious truth but instead of shooting the messenger people should focus on the message:
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
The problem is two-fold:
1. If people are too stupid to save for themselves then the rest of society should not be (financially) burdened to literally pay for their stupidity.
2. If the taxes are > 10% then guess what: We have a government spending problem. No wonder people can't save when an additional 23% of their money is stolen.
Of course it would help if the government didn't profit off of people dieing with bullshit "Inheritance Tax". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_tax
When greed permeates the whole system all sorts of half-baked and half-assed solutions look viable.
> There really should be a single, global registry for all trademarks, because, with the internet, every business is a global business.
That fact that a corporation can hijack language and have an artificial monopoly on a word is bullshit to begin with.
Reminds me of that old joke ...
Q. How do you tell a happy biker? :-)
A. His teeth is full of bugs.
> Well, authors got no such thing until copyright was invented in the wary 18th century
While that is true that is a little misleading as it doesn't list WHY copyright was even invented in the first place:
Publishers invented copyright to stop other publishers from copying and making money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law [wikipedia.org]
"The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books."
and
"Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time."
and
"The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King's Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called "monopolies," ...
and
"In England the printers, known as stationers, formed a collective organisation, known as the Stationers' Company. In the 16th century the Stationers' Company was given the power to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. Only members of the Stationers' Company could enter books into the register. This meant that the Stationers' Company achieved a dominant position over publishing in 17th century England"
and Emphasis added about Statute of Anne:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
That indeed would be a good start.
When are the youth going to help do something about it since the elders certainly don't seem willing or able.
As a mystic I was wondering the exact thing: How does a layman decide between exoteric and esoteric when they have no valid frame of reference to even understand the difference?
Only cowards use censorship
Exactly! How about government being
a) accountable
b) honest
c) transparent
So this bullshit about government over stepping its Constitutional Authority doesn't happen in the first place.
Very nice suggestion about using two pools !
>of course you will need a system that can use ZFS
Actually I was suprised how well "ZFS on Linux" works if you don't have a FreeNas/BSD system.
* http://zfsonlinux.org/
It is too bad the ZFSonLinux documentation is total garbage but at least it was relatively painless to get it to work on a spare Ubuntu box. IIRC, ZFS on Linux setup was ...
Yup almost everyone missed the point of having to deal with shitty File Systems.
Agreed about using the "dumb" FAT32 FS for speedy access!
It's too bad you couldn't load the FS meta-info into a RAM drive, or onto a SSD, kind of like how ZFS gives you the option with the ZIL on SSD.
> What about all the stuff his foundation does about malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV?
> for some his more destructive effects on the computer industry,
Gee you think?!
So this asswipe waits until:
a) his Wife prods him to donate his wealth
b) AFTER ripping off and bankrupting several companies.
And you think that is OK??
An true philanthropy would of done it WHILE he was accumulating his wealth not after he is an greedy asshat. Let me know when I can upgrade Windows for $20. Fuck him, Microsoft, and their greed for setting the computer industry back 20 years.
Microsoft is on the long road to being irrelevant. They throw billions of dollars at a problem (Xbox/Xbone, bing, RT, store) trying to get everyone else to drink their "Kool-Aid" (TM). People aren't [that] stupid.
Agreed.
"Only cowards use censorship."
Very *nice* comment -- spot on.
Only other thing to mention is that supercomputing trades latency for bandwidth. i.e. high latency but vastly high bandwidth.
Intel does a great job of masking latency on x86 so we get "relatively" low latency for memory but it's bandwidth is crap compared to a "real" supercomputer or GPGPU.
/sarcasm: Exactly! Who are you mere mortal to dare question the infinite wisdom of the UX designers!! *cough*
Riiiight .... says the 7-digit UID to the 5-digit UID person who has been browsing & contributing to /. for 10+ years and programming since the 80's.
Are you even able to stay focused for more then 2 minutes and actively engage that brain of yours or do just like to make yourself look a bigger idiot with the immature ad hominem attack which adds nothing constructive to the discussion at hand?
When did /. turn into Reddit retard mode??
Exactly. Greed is the ONLY reason copyright even exists in the first place.